Day 3 - Beijing

Blog post Part 1

While riding on a bus at 12:30 p.m. today:

Even though we will go to 3 popular tourist attractions today, it seems our time is spent not so much learning about Chinese culture, but about getting to know the families in our travel group a bit. There are 13 families, all of which are here for ONE thing: to get their daughters or sons. This is the first day that we’ve all been together, since most everyone arrived in Beijing last night. For a couple more days we will sight-see and enjoy Chinese cuisine, and continue to recover from jet-lag. (So far I haven’t spoken to anyone who slept through the night.)

Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City

Summer Palace

We’ve been to the first two already today, and will go the Summer Palace after lunch. It is so hot today, and there are no clouds to shield the ferocity of the sun. The humidity is quite high, as well, making the temperature all the more toasty. We walk around with the droves, shoulder to shoulder, and constantly trying to navigate through groups of people to stay in close proximity to our own group.

Our guide, Rosa, is a like our mother duck. She waves her little blue America World flag as she walks along, to keep all her little ducklings following close behind. She leads, we follow. She shares about the different places we visit, the ancient history inside these walls, but it is very difficult to follow her soft-spoken voice. There are so many people here, so many other sounds competing with her words.

We are all trying to stay hydrated, drinking lots of water, making sure our kids drink lots of water. We take many pictures, get so much of this captured on video, wipe the sweat away, move onward with the throngs of people. This is a tough day to absorb information. It seems enough of a task just to stay ahead of the heat and keep the 5 members of our family together, then the 38 in our group together.

It is now 9:15 p.m. in Beijing. It feels GOOD to be back in the hotel room, snug in this bed. It was quite a day. We sleep 2 more nights, then we fly to Nanchang. I believe the flight takes a couple of hours, but am not sure, since we don’t have our detailed itinerary for that day, yet. Within a few hours of arriving there, we will have Ahna. And there I end this post.

Part 2

Miscellaneous Info. for the Day:

1. Our guides for this trip are Rosa and Maggie. They work with America World, our adoption agency, but are employees of a Chinese company that works for the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). They have worked together for 6 years (I think), and will be with us every step of the way until we leave this country with our daughter.

2. There are throngs of people in this city. Everywhere. All the time. Tony, our guide from OCDF our first day here, told us: there are 14 million people in Beijing; 8 million bicycles; 3 million cars.

3. Umbrellas are standard accessories here, and are used to keep out the sun’s rays more than they’re used to keep out the rain. Many times my scalp has been grazed by passing umbrellas.

4. I have been to the much talked about squatty potty in China. And NO, there was no tissue provided. Do take your own. And do not drop tissue in to said squatty potty before using it, as it will be of no use to you, then. I know this from experience.

5. Speaking of potty: Day before yesterday as we were walking the streets to find food (actually a restaurant), we came across a mom holding her baby over an overpass to potty. Think Michael Jackson. There were 4 busy lanes of traffic below, but when a baby’s gotta go, a baby’s gotta go. So, I wonder which vehicle got plastered? This photo shows the Chinese split pants the children wear here. We saw this sweety today.

The end. And hey out there, if you're keeping up with our journey, leave us a comment to say hello. We'd love to know who we're connecting with.

Today's Pictures - Click Here